Dropping Knowledge: The Fishtail Parka

Planning on flexing your sartorial muscles in the blog arena? You'll need to come packing. And no, we're not referring to your pocket square game. Every week on The Eye, we'll cover a basic term you need to know right now... before you get laughed off the internet.

M-51. Most menswear aficionados are familiar with this military shorthand, a name given to the piece of standard issue outerwear you see above. But just how much history can be packed into that one little letter and two digits? The answer, especially when it comes to M-51, is quite a lot. The "M," as you may have guessed, easily stands for military but it's the "51" where story behind the U.S. military's fishtail parka begins to unfold.

The year was 1951 and the U.S. military was in the throes of the Cold War, a battle that, until then, was fought in hypothetical terms and not on the front lines. This scenario was the opposite of what had occurred the year prior, where our country found itself thrust into the line of fire after intervening in the ongoing Korean War. Soldiers dropped into the foreign territory weren't nearly prepared enough for the inclement conditions they faced, posing a serious problem for the government. In fact, it was the brutal Korean weather that gave birth to the fishtail parka.

The basic design behind the fishtail parka isn't too far off from it's military outerwear sibling, the N-3B snorkel. What makes the M-51 so special, though, is the aquatic inspired "tail" that's the source of it's commonly used moniker. And while that fishtail adds a certain aesthetic flair to the jacket, its originally purpose was strictly practical. While fashion folks would have you believe the tail is intended to hang down like the back end of a salmon, it's actually function is to be tied around the wearer's legs, from the back to the front, in order to seal things off from any unexpected wind gusts. The conditions in Korea called for a jacket that was more concerned with warmth than keeping guys dry and so, unlike the snorkel parka, the fishtail was crafted out of a water-resistant nylon and cotton that could keep a soldier warm in frigid conditions. And to keep all extremities warm and toasty, the jacket was outfitted with two slanted hand-warmer pockets and an oversized fur hood.

The fishtail parka, reworked for the high-end by DSquared2

After the war ended the jacket's unique design made it a hit as a youth culture uniform. While in the states the jacket slowly seeped into surplus stores, over in England it became a full on craze. Throughout the 60's mod rockers rode around through the streets of London on Vespas with the tails of their parkas blowing in the wind--an image made immortal by The Who's 1979 flick Quadrophenia. After that, the jacket went mainstream, settling into its place as an all-purpose ideal for fashion guys and surplus-sporting kids on the coldest of days.